Don't Wanna Be Dumb No More
by Mr. Garbanzo
Summary: Yammy Rialgo: the strongest Arrancar of them all in terms of raw power... though unfortunately for him, raw power was about all he ever had. Spurred on by his most recent of many embarrassing losses to opponents he should've been able to flatten, Yammy begins an epic journey... to stop being so stupid.
1. I Ain't Dead Yet, Bitch!

In the dark confines of the laboratory beneath the Twelfth Division barracks, a roomful of large operating tables was a little more crowded than usual. Many bodies of all different shapes and sizes were arrayed on them with thin white blankets covering them; if someone were to take a closer look, they would notice that the majority of the bodies displayed mask pieces that clearly marked them as Arrancar.

Someone more knowledgeable of Arrancar would also note that they were not restrained by shackles, binding kido, or any other means… as if they were assumed dead and therefore no threat to the researchers, despite the fact that their bodies were still intact and had not yet dispersed into spirit particles as all of their kind did shortly after their moment of death.

While most of the unconscious and wounded Arrancar remained still, the largest of the bodies coughed once and shifted slightly. For a moment, a few of his massive fingers twitched. The wounds that had caused him to lose consciousness had begun to heal, and he was almost ready to awaken.

And, as Captain Kurotsuchi and other members of his squad were about to find out, not restraining this particular Arrancar was a _big_ mistake…

**Chapter 1**

_~ I Ain't Dead Yet, Bitch! ~_

The large Arrancar groaned slightly as he came to, noticing that he was still sore from his last battle even though his slow regeneration had already sealed his wounds and he was no longer at risk of death. His eyes slowly opened up for the first time in what must have been days, staring up at the ceiling above him. It was too dark to see much of anything, but it was clear he wasn't in Hueco Mundo anymore.

"_Huh,"_ he thought, _"Where the hell am I?"_

A strange screechy noise from the next room caused him to pause for a moment in an attempt to figure out what it was. After a few seconds of listening (and waking up further) it became clear that the "noise" was in fact a voice. A high-pitched, creepy voice, to be specific.

"My, my," the voice said, "This little one's awake already? I'll have to prepare a stronger tranquilizer…"

More importantly than the human-like voice, however, was what sounded an awful lot like the whimper of a puppy. This was soon followed by a pained bark. The Arrancar's eyes widened; he was now fully awake, post-battle soreness be damned. He threw off his sheet and sat upright, then threw himself down from the table, his massive weight cracking the floor's tiles as he landed.

In the next room over, Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi's attention was suddenly diverted away from his next test subject (who hopped off of the table and scurried away) by the _thump_ from the room where all of the bodies from Hueco Mundo were being stored, followed shortly afterward by a series of heavy footsteps.

"_One of _them_ is awake?",_ he thought, noticing that the little dog Arrancar had escaped his clutches but not particularly caring about that development at the moment. _"But how? Surely they were all…"_

He thought about it for just a moment more, staring in the direction of the door… until, that is, the shape of a muscular Arrancar—too large to actually walk through the door like a normal person–came smashing through and sending shards of broken stone flying everywhere. Mayuri recognized this one immediately—not just any Arrancar, but the only Espada he had been able to collect from the battlefield.

"Ah… Yammy Rialgo," he said, reaching for his zanpakuto with one hand but not yet drawing it. "The Decima Espada… or was it Cero Espada? I suppose it doesn't matter that much now that you're here."

Yammy stared at the odd little man in front of him. Was this guy a Soul Reaper, or something else? He was dressed like one all right, but with that crazy mask, he looked more like some kind of Hollow at first glance. But he couldn't be an Arrancar, none of his mask was missing...

"_Damn,"_ Yammy thought, _"Gettin' a headache already… all this thinkin' ain't any good."_

He shook his head for a moment, then took a step forward and stared at the masked Captain, his face twisting into a snarl.

"Hey, you!", he yelled, pointing one meaty finger at the Soul Reaper, "You the bastard who's been messing with Kukkapuro?"

Mayuri blinked. What in the world was a "Kukkapuro?" For a moment, all of the data he had recorded on Yammy flashed through his mind; he recalled the moment he had found the giant Arrancar lying wounded and bleeding in the simulated sand of Las Noches' massive training room. That dog Arrancar that refused to leave his side…

"Kukkapuro," the Captain said, cocking his head to his side slightly. "Hmm… quite an unusual name. Is that perhaps that small canine Arrancar that I found with you?"

A vein in Yammy's forehead twitched. Now he _knew_ that this freak was the one responsible. He lunged forward and took a swing at Mayuri, only narrowly missing as the Captain flash-stepped out of the way at the last moment. The nearest table was not so lucky; being unable to move aside, half of it was instantly crushed to dust by the force of the impact. The Soul Reaper reappeared a few yards away on the other side of the room, waving one finger at his opponent while keeping his other hand firmly on the hilt of his zanpakuto.

"Yes… exactly as the reports said," Mayuri mused to himself. "Nothing more than a raging brute, smashing away without so much as a thought to strategy."

He began to unsheathe his sword, flash-stepping away again in mid-draw to avoid another powerful punch that left a crater in the wall behind where he had been standing. When he reappeared behind Yammy, he was holding his sealed Zanpakuto, pointing it in the Arrancar's direction.

"And you're rather slow as well," he continued, mocking every aspect of Yammy's fighting style. "I wonder, will I even need to release my Shikai to get you under control?"

Yammy growled and charged in once again.

"_Damn… the little bug just won't stand still!",_ he thought, swinging and missing once, then again, and then a third time. _"Doesn't even try to counterattack, just keeps running away and running his mouth!"_

Mayuri glanced to the side for a moment as he dodged yet another clumsy punch. He was having no difficulty avoiding the Arrancar's attacks, but if this kept up for much longer, his lab would end up being smashed to pieces. Yammy yelled and swung at the Captain from across the room, this time launching a Bala in his direction rather than a simple punch; this time, he managed to catch his opponent off guard, and Mayuri was sent flying backward, landing flat on his back ontop of one of his own laboratory tables.

"Ha _ha!_", Yammy laughed, flexing his arm as the red energy of the Bala still crackled around it. "Gotcha that time, ya Hollow-lookin' freak!"

He paused for just a moment and then opened his mouth wide, beginning to charge up a powerful Cero blast. Mayuri noticed the reddish glow that had begun to fill the room and flash-stepped away just in time to avoid it as it tore through the table and blew a hole through the wall behind it, shaking the entire Twelfth Division barracks and causing the lower-ranking Soul Reapers above to wonder if the Seireitei had just been hit by a small earthquake. As he came to a stop behind Yammy, he readied his sword and took a deep breath; the Espada was proving to be a more difficult opponent than he had expected, especially in such a confined space.

"Hmph… it appears I've underestimated your luck," he said, raising his sword in Yammy's direction and causing him to turn once again. "Speaking of which, that ends now. Claw out… Ashisogi Jizō."

Mayuri's sword began to glow with a strange light, the shape of its blade shifting from an ordinary katana to a distorted three-pronged weapon adorned with what appeared to be the image of a monstrous baby's face. Its mouth opened slightly, releasing a puff of some sort of noxious-looking gas; Yammy's nose wrinkled at the sight of it, though he didn't notice any actual smell from where he was standing.

"What? Your sword just got _smaller_," he blurted out, scratching his head for a moment before shifting back into a battle stance. "What're you gonna do with that little thing, make it burp on me or somethin'?"

Mayuri rolled his eyes.

"You'll see," he said, raising the transformed zanpakuto and lunging forward for a strike.

Yammy stepped back just in time to avoid this first attack, but when the next one came he wasn't so lucky; Ashisogi Jizō's central point pierced his left arm just below the shoulder as Mayuri thrust it upward, managing to pierce the Arrancar's hierro but not causing any serious damage.

"Huh… that was it?", Yammy said, glancing down at the little pinprick of an injury and wiping away the small amount of blood that had leaked out. "Damn… you were better off with that sword you had before, ya dumbass! At least that thing might've—gah!"

Mayuri grinned. Finally, his Shikai's ability had taken hold of the big Arrancar; Yammy's legs buckled and he crashed to the ground, becoming unable to stand as he lost control of his limbs. His fall cracked several more of the floor tiles, but compared to the destruction he had already caused, this was no big deal; all of the damage could easily be fixed later, after all.

"Guh… what the… what the hell's goin' on!?", Yammy yelled. Though his arms and legs had gone limp when he had fallen, his big mouth was working just as well as ever. "Damn it… I can't move! What'd you do to me, you bastard!?"

"What you are experiencing now is the ability of my zanpakuto, Ashisogi Jizō," he explained, "The nerve operations connecting your brain to your limbs have been cut off… so you find yourself unable to move. Quite a useful ability when it comes to collecting specimens, I must say."

Yammy gritted his teeth and growled.

"_Can't move my arms… legs either… damn it! I'm… I'm stuck!"_

The Arrancar stared up at the Captain as he slowly approached him, reverting his zanpakuto to its sealed form once again. He raised it up and then brought it down, leaving a shallow gash across Yammy's exposed back.

"However, as you have surely realized … only those nervous signals responsible for moving your limbs have been sealed away."

He swung once again, crossing over the previous wound with another long scrape that was far from life-threatening (thanks to Yammy's hierro) but still hurt like heck.

"Those responsible for _pain_, on the other hand, are quite functional."

Yammy winced as Mayuri raked his back with his zanpakuto several more times, leaving a crisscrossing network of cuts behind. Even when he had his arm lopped off in one shot by that Ichigo kid, even when he found himself tumbling down five floors of Las Noches when that Quincy had caught him in a trap, he had never felt so helpless. He had never before felt so… _stupid._

And this made him angry. _Very_ angry.

"Hmm?", Mayuri mumbled to himself, noticing something different about the air in the room. Yammy's spiritual power was overflowing; at first it was only felt, but soon it became visible as well, surrounding the big Arrancar's entire body with a flame-like aura of red and orange. "What's this? Do you have some trick left up your sleeve that wasn't mentioned in my data?"

Yammy just growled in response. His power continued to surge, so much so that he regained function of one of his own arms through sheer will; Mayuri's Shikai simply did not have enough power behind it to contain him any longer. Regaining control over his legs, he raised himself into a kneeling pose and then from there struggled a bit to pull himself completely to his feet. It was at this point that Mayuri realized that Yammy's hand was on the hilt of his zanpakuto, and that what was happening _was_ in his data after all…

"Enrage!", he shouted, standing up to his full height as his surging power finally became so great that it completely broke the hold that Mayuri's zanpakuto had over his limbs. "_Ira!_"

Mayuri's eyes widened as he remembered just how large Yammy was about to become… and just small the room they were in was.

"Oh dear," he said, staring ahead like a deer in the headlights as Yammy began to rapidly increase in size right in front of him. "This… is going to hurt."


	2. Prison Break

**Chapter 2**

_~ Prison Break ~_

Yammy stumbled out into the street alongside the Twelfth Division barracks, staggering slightly as he took a few steps away from the Yammy-shaped hole (which was several times his current size) in the building's wall before slumping to one knee on the ground and breathing heavily. Though no longer half-dead, he certainly wasn't in any shape to be using his Resurrección, and that brief burst of his released form's power that had been enough to overwhelm his captor and break him out of that underground lab was also enough to almost completely exhaust his energy.

The little dog Fracción Kukkapuro, who had scrambled out of the hole just behind his Espada, wagged his tail slightly at the sight of him, then let out a concerned whimper as he noticed Yammy's weakened condition.

"Damn… I'm starvin'," he mumbled to himself, weakly raising one hand up in front of him and clenching his fist. "Gotta… go get somethin' to eat…"

There was a strange sound in the air for just a moment as a Garganta opened up directly in front of the large Arrancar. The last of his strength used up on the technique used to open the portal, Yammy fell unconscious once again, tumbling forward into the opening and plummeting toward Hueco Mundo…

Down in what was left of Mayuri's laboratory, several other wounded Arrancar had been rudely awakened by Yammy's rampage (and the avalanche of rubble that followed.) Thankfully, Yammy had released in the operating room itself rather than the one where they had been stashed away, so the damage to the ceiling above them had been kept to a minimum; the only Arrancar who had actually been hit by a chunk of the falling rock was apparently more than capable of shrugging it off, tossing the foot-wide slab of stone aside with little effort as he sat upright on his table and brushed smaller bits of rubble out of his long, blonde hair.

This particular Arrancar was no stranger to laboratories, being the older brother of Las Noches' resident mad scientist Szayel-Aporro Grantz. He didn't recognize this particular room, but it wasn't the first time he had woken up in a lab with no recollection of how he had gotten there; it still unnerved him, but he was calmer than most others would be in the same situation.

"Ugh," he groaned, hopping down to the floor and glancing around for any sign of others that he might recognize. "What happened here?"

"I have _no_ idea," a purple-haired female Arrancar said, crossing her arms across her chest. "It was already like this when I woke up."

Though waking up in a lab didn't seem to bother him too much, something else Ilfort noticed certainly did. His face reddened and he turned away from the other Arrancar shortly after taking a look at her, barely suppressing a giggle. She just glared back at him, not sure what had brought out that reaction.

"What?"

"You're… you're not wearing any p-pants…"

Cirucci's eyes widened. A slight breeze from somewhere above their current location alerted her to the fact that her skirt was indeed missing. Her trademark armored underwear, thankfully, was still in place… but that was about it. She sighed and slapped one hand to her face, disguising the fact the she, too, was turning a rather bright pinkish shade of red.

"Ilfort," she muttered, "If I _ever_ see that damned pervert brother of yours again…"

The blonde Arrancar sighed.

"I don't think you'll have to worry about that," he said. "Brother's reiatsu… I haven't been able to sense it at all since I woke up here."

Cirucci rolled her eyes.

"Well, good for you," she snapped. "At least you _can_ sense reiatsu…"

She walked away from Ilfort, grumbling all the way about all the violent things she would love to do to a certain Quincy if she ever stumbled upon him again as she moved into the next room. As the epicenter of Yammy's rampage, this one was almost entirely filled with rubble from above, a few shattered tables and the walls around the edges of the room being all that was left of it. After taking a good look around, she turned back toward the Fracción and frowned.

"You know… I'm pretty sure we're not in Las Noches here."

"Yeah," Ilfort replied, gripping the hilt of his zanpakuto with one hand just in case he needed it as he joined Cirucci in the destroyed room. "I noticed… this definitely isn't Brother's lab. One of those Soul Reapers must have dragged us off somewhere else."

Cirucci, walking around the piles of rubble in an attempt to find a place that she could climb up in her weakened state, glanced back to Ilfort for a moment.

"Oh, great," she muttered, "What's next, black-robed grunts coming out from all over to—_gyaaaah!_"

Slipping on some sort of liquid on the ground, she tumbled over backward, slamming down butt-first onto the cracked tile floor. She groaned slightly for a few moments, then began to pull herself back up to her feet, slapping Ilfort's hand away when he offered to help her up.

"What happened?"

"What'd it _look_ like, dumbass?", Cirucci snarled. "I slipped on… whatever the hell _this_ stuff is."

"This stuff," it turned out, was a greenish slime that had collected into a large pool on the floor in the spot Cirucci had just made the mistake of stepping on. One of her boots was now stained with a few drops of the yucky-looking liquid, which made her scrunch up her nose in disgust as he noticed.

"Eww. That's pretty nasty," Ilfort said, taking notice of the slime for the first time. "You probably shouldn't touch it…"

"A little late for that," she groaned, attempting to wipe the stuff off of her boot but not being very successful. She glared at the ooze for a moment, stopping only when she suddenly got the strangest feeling that it would be glaring back if it had eyes.

The two Arrancar then began to scale the pile of rubble, Cirucci climbing up the shattered stone blocks and then jumping to reach the next floor up while Ilfort skipped all that and just jumped straight up onto the closest intact section of floor above him. Seeing just how easily the Fracción was getting ahead of her, she stared down at her feet and groaned.

"Damn it… I can't even use Sonído like this…"

Just as she had mentioned it, the buzzing sound of the Arrancar high-speed movement technique sounded right next to her, and she glanced over just in time to see Ilfort's blurred form appearing and scooping her up in both arms before leaping upward once again.

"There you go," he said, holding onto the smaller Arrancar as he leaped up several floors of the underground lab in rapid succession. "We should be getting pretty close to the surface by now."

"You little punk! How _dare_ you! _Let go of me!_", she growled, struggling against Ilfort's grip but finding that she was unable to so much as budge him in her weakened condition. "_Now!_"

Ilfort grinned for a moment before giving her a more serious look.

"Not until we're out of here. You don't want to be stuck fighting Soul Reapers like that if I get too far ahead, do you?"

Cirucci said nothing; she only growled in annoyance and begrudgingly allowed Ilfort to carry her up another few floors, until they had reached a place that looked like an old Japanese-style wooden building rather than a high-tech scientific lab. Ilfort finally let the Privaron Espada go at this point, unceremoniously plopping her down on the floor. She quickly stood back up and rubbed her knees slightly, though they weren't visibly scratched at all. Even in her near-powerless condition, it seemed, she still had at least _some_ hierro protecting her.

"And here's the door," Ilfort said, pointing in the direction of the Yammy-shaped hole in the wall.

"How convenient."

Cirucci walked to the edge of the room and hopped down into the street, then instinctively held up one hand in an attempt to open a Garganta. With her spiritual powers disabled, of course, this didn't work at all. Ilfort stepped up to her position, glancing up and down the street around them and being a bit surprised when he didn't see low-ranked Soul Reapers swarming at them from all directions. He figured that whoever smashed the hole in the wall must have scared them off… at least for now. Without saying anything, he opened a Garganta of his own, stepping toward it and then turning back toward Cirucci for a moment. Before he could say anything, he was interrupted by the sound of footsteps from inside of the barracks.

"Crap," Cirucci muttered, reaching for her yo-yo-like zanpakuto but (of course) finding that it was absent along with the rest of her powers. "That must be the Soul Reapers…"

"Wait!", a voice from inside yelled, shortly before the sounds of footsteps sped up a bit. "Wait for us, you guys!"

Soon, the source of the footsteps became clear—several Arrancar of various sizes and shapes had followed them out of the Twelfth Division barracks. The one who had yelled out to them, an apparently uninjured medic who was now breathing heavily from running to catch up with them, paused to catch his breath as the rest caught up with him and stepped through the makeshift door.

"What the… Kouvás? Lopata?", he asked, glancing at the medic and one of the several servant Arrancar standing nearby him. He then turned his gaze to one of the few wearing the white-and-black warrior uniform. "And you, you're Duarte Gerron, one of Mosqueda's Fracciónes... the three of you were reported missing over a year ago!"

"You can blame your brother for that," he said, sighing slightly. "We're just lucky we escaped without undergoing any… modifications…"

"And speaking of escaping," a new voice said, coming from somewhere within the barracks, "We should get to that soon. Save the talking for another time…"

A blonde Arrancar wearing an eyepatch, with his shirtless chest marred by a terrible wound that had only recently begun to heal, walked out from between the group of others, leaning on the edges of the barracks wall for support. He coughed slightly, spitting up a small amount of blood; moving about as much as he had been recently wasn't the best idea for someone in his condition.

"Tesla Lindocruz," Cirucci said, recognizing his face. "You're one of Nnoitora's… how did _you_ end up here?"

"I'd assume the same way all of us got here," Ilfort said, answering for his fellow Fracción before Tesla himself had a chance to open his mouth. "After the battle in Las Noches, some Soul Reaper dragged him away and stuck him in that lab."

Tesla nodded.

"And I was too badly wounded to even do anything about it," he said. He hung his head in shame. "I've failed Master Nnoitora once again…"

"You _survived_ it, though," Cirucci said, walking over to him and shaking him slightly. "That's the important part, isn't it? Forget about what Nnoitora thinks, that guy's a jerk anyway!"

Tesla said nothing, only continuing to stare down at the ground. Kouvás the medic hurriedly pulled Cirucci away from the wounded warrior before her shaking got any more violent, stopping for a moment to inspect the stitches in his wound to make sure none of them had come loose before breathing a sigh of relief.

"Come on," Ilfort said, motioning toward the still-open Garganta before them. "We can argue about this stuff when we're out of enemy territory."

The group of Arrancar agreed—few of them were in any shape to be fighting if Soul Reapers happened to show up and attempt to murder them without provocation (as they were known to do.) Before long, they were all out of the damaged barracks and headed through the Garganta that would take them back home.

Yammy, still unconscious, continued to topple down endlessly through the swirling chaos of energy within the Garganta. Kukkapuro clung to his back, attempting to get the large Espada's attention so that he could move onward to Hueco Mundo rather than just falling forever, but it was no use; Yammy was so drained of energy that he would not awaken for quite a while, no matter how many times the puppy Arrancar nipped at his bare skin or barked in his ears.

Eventually, the little dog gave up. Or, at least, he gave up on waiting for Yammy himself to form a pathway of reishi that would lead the two of them back home—instead of waiting for Yammy, Kukkapuro leaped forward and did it himself.

"Rrrr-_rrarf!_"

With a burst of energy, the puppy who had up until now seemed helpless took charge, taking a flying leap off of Yammy's back and solidifying the chaotic reishi around him into a fairly smooth pathway. He then ran ahead at full speed as his unconscious lump of a master began to slide rapidly down the path—as Yammy was unable to walk in his current condition, Kukkapuro was forced to make the path work more like a slide, slanting downward ever so slightly as it extended ever onward to the light that signified an entrance to Hueco Mundo. As Yammy's constant downward sliding caused him to pick up speed, Kukkapuro yelped slightly and then sped forward in a burst of Sonído, causing the pathway below him to extend even faster than before. Finally, at the end of the dark tunnel, he leaped once again, flying through the gateway to Hueco Mundo with Yammy sliding in not far behind him.

On the other side, Kukkapuro landed first, slamming into the surface of Hueco Mundo's white desert face-first and quickly becoming buried halfway beneath the sand. Yammy landed a moment afterward, kicking up even more sand upon impact and completely burying the unfortunate puppy. A few seconds later, Kukkapuro finally managed to dig his way out of the sandy prison that he had accidentally ended up in; now, all that was left for him to do was to sit there and wait for his Espada to get up…

…Again.

Yammy wasn't awake. But he was, at least to a certain extent, aware. Aware of _what_, he wasn't quite sure, but he could tell that there was some sort of presence near him that he had not previously felt. A few seconds passed in complete silence, and then…

"Yammy," a strangely familiar voice said, "Open your eyes, you fool."

Slowly, the big Espada did as the voice had commanded. He was no longer in the Soul Society, as far as he could tell. He wasn't anywhere in Hueco Mundo that he recognized, either. Standing up and glancing all around him, he could see nothing but empty blackness… and yet, it wasn't dark. He could see his own hands perfectly when he held them up in front of his face; despite the appearance of the strange, featureless void around him, it was not dark at all… only empty.

"Wh… where the hell am I!?"

Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled somewhere off in the distance. For the first time, Yammy looked up to the sky above him and found that wherever he was, it was not completely empty after all—dark gray clouds had gathered overhead, as if a storm was building. And still, somehow, nothing shrouded his vision; it was as if the clouds, as thick as they were, did not cast a shadow at all.

"Yammy," the voice called out to him once again. "Pay attention. You are standing… upside down."

The Espada's field of vision suddenly twisted; the cloudy sky above him now seemed to be hundreds of feet _below_ instead, and he was plummeting ever downward. He couldn't manage to draw out enough of his energy to stop himself in midair like he usually could, or even enough to slow his descent; he just continued to fall until he smashed into the clouds like a meteor, causing them to splash away at the moment of his impact before slowly drifting back into place. When he managed to pull himself to his feet again, he was now standing knee-deep in gray fog. Lightning flashed again, but this time he could see the arc as it passed from the cloud-covered floor upward endlessly into the black sky. Just watching it happen made his head hurt; whatever this place was, nothing about it made any sense.

"_Damn… this place sucks,_" he thought, clenching his fists. "_Everything about it just makes me wanna…_"

"Haul off and smash something?", the voice butted in, finishing his thought for him. "That _would_ be how you always went about things. But tell me… how well has that been working for you lately, Yammy?"

Yammy's eyes widened and he looked around frantically for the source of the voice, to no avail.

"Who are you!? Come out and talk to me face-to-face, dammit!"

Lightning erupted from the surface of the clouds once again, this time closer than before. Yammy shielded his eyes for a moment, then looked around as if he expected someone to have suddenly appeared during that brief moment.

"Are you sure?", the voice said, pausing for a moment as lightning struck again. "Are you really ready to confront me… in your current state?"

Yammy growled.

"What's _that_ supposed ta mean!?"

There was no response; only more reversed lightning strikes, the blue-green bolts bursting forth from the clouds around him and spiraling off infinitely into the distance.

"Are you talkin' about how I'm still all messed-up from that last fight!?", Yammy yelled out, hoping to get some sort of a response from the voice. "Is that it? That ain't anything to worry about, ya stupid… disembodied voice… freak! I ain't gotta be at full power just ta _talk_ to a guy, right!?"

An audible sigh echoed through the world all around him. The upside-down lightning stopped for a moment, replaced by a slight drizzle of upside-down rain.

"It's all about power with you, isn't it?", the voice asked, not even bothering to wait for a response before continuing. "Of course… I should have known you couldn't change so quickly. You've always been that way… ever since we first met."

Yammy gave the empty (and now slightly rainy) sky around him a weird look.

"Wait, what?", he said, glancing around again even though it had long since become obvious that the source of the mysterious voice was not going to show itself just yet. "Whaddya mean 'when we first met?' I ain't even had one look at you yet!"

For a few seconds, Yammy waited for a response, but none ever came. The clouds below him parted, and the black void around him began to give way to white one small chunk at a time.

He was waking up.


End file.
